A Gem of a Solution to the Mystery of

THE HOLY GRAIL

by Sue DePasquale

     Fr. G. Ronald Murphy, SJ, still recalls the trepidation he felt climbing the beautiful steps of the Diocesan Museum in Bamberg, Germany, that fateful day. "I'm going to come near to passing out if that stone is green," he recalls thinking, as he entered the museum's magnificent exhibition hall and moved slowly closer to a glass enclosed exhibit. "I kept my eyes down, I was almost stooped over, afraid to look. And there it was. And it was green. I don't know how to describe how it felt. It had been such a long journey."

     Before him sat a rather unassuming medieval portable altar, barely the size of a shoebox, with images of the Twelve Disciples carved into the sides, and the flowing river of Paradise depicted on the edge of its upper table. But it was the lid of the sepulchrum, the altar stone itself, that captured Murphy's attention: It was made from green serpentine.

      For Murphy, a professor of German at Georgetown University, the presence of the green gem was all the evidence he needed. He had found the Holy Grail.

      Or at least the Holy Grail that inspired Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German romance, Parzival, written in 1200 and considered by scholars to be the most complex and beautiful of the medieval Holy Grail romances. Murphy describes his quest in a carefully researched book just out from Oxford University Press, Gemstone of Paradise: The Holy Grail in Wolfram's Parzival (2006).

      The book's publication has cast Murphy in the media spotlight. On October 20, the Chronicle of Higher Education featured a front-page article about his work, headlined "Indiana Jones, Check Your Voice Mail." In November, he spoke at a gathering sponsored by the National Press Club. And a wide array of renowned scholars-including Arthurian expert Bonnie Wheeler and medieval German literature scholar Albrecht Classen-have weighed in to support Murphy's research and findings.

      Rather than the more conventionally accepted chalice, the Holy Grail, as described by Wolfram, is a "sacred stone." Says Murphy, "Over my many years of teaching the Parzival, I became convinced that I had figured out just what this mysterious stone was"-a portable altar stone, commonly used throughout the Middle Ages. Murphy knew that it was traditional to seal relics of the saints in these stones. Through further research, he discovered that it was also customary to seal three particles of the consecrated Host inside each consecrated altar. "That amazed me because it meant that we have the image of the tomb-it really is the Holy Sepulcher in transportable form," he says.

      The Grail, "container of the sacred body and blood of Christ," Murphy argues, was where God said it would be: on the altar at the consecration of the Mass.

      Murphy sees Wolfram's Parzival as a reaction to the violence of the Crusades going on at the time. "It became a wonderful way of telling all of the Crusaders: You already possess the Holy Sepulcher. Why are you running off and committing fratricide against the Muslims to secure the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, when you already have it in the saddlebags of each and every [traveling priest]?"

      These insights led Murphy on a quest to find the actual altar stone that inspired Wolfram's work-a quest that ultimately took him that fateful afternoon to the Diocesan Museum in Bamberg. Though there were countless portable altars constructed during the period that Wolfram wrote Parzival, the author's "sacred stone" included unique reference to a green gem. According to Murphy's reading, the gem is green serpentine, one of the precious stones associated with the rivers of Paradise. When Murphy lifted his eyes to the lid of the altar stone at Bamberg and saw the translucent green serpentine, he became convinced that he was gazing upon the very "Holy Grail" that had inspired Wolfram.

      For Murphy, the lessons of Wolfram's Parzival are especially pertinent today. At the end of the medieval romance, the Christian knight Parzival chooses a pagan brother, who falls madly in love with a Christian woman, the one who carries the Grail. "He is converted to Christianity not by the sword but by falling in love with the woman who holds the Grail and her name is Overflowing Joy," Murphy explains.

      Today, Murphy writes, "the ancient and deadly hostilities that were present at the beginning of the 13th century are back again: Christian versus Muslim versus Jew in the Holy Land and beyond." As Christians, Murphy argues, we have the Holy Grail in our possession in the form of the risen Christ. Why resort to bloodshed?

      "Let them see the happiness we've got-we've got the Resurrection. Isn't that worth falling in love with?" Murphy asks. "It's as relevant today as it was in 1210."

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G. Ronald Murphy. SJ

Sue DePasquale is a freelance writer in Baltimore.